WyldKat wrote on May 1, 2011, 03:34:I've actually been having a ton of fun with STO after all the changes they've made. Most of that is because of the weekly episodes and the Foundry, which lets people create missions for others to play. There's been some fantastic story driven player-made episodes I've played.

I have a lifetime subscription to this, and haven't touched it in 8 months. I think I might have to check it out again. I kind of forgot about it until you mentioned it :P.

Patch time...

To be honest if it wasn't for the weekly episodes, player made missions (some of which rival Cryptics content), and continual and upcoming additions I wouldn't have resubbed or be considering a lifetime sub. There's a player mission that takes you to Bajor, it's very story driven but I highly recommend it. I also recommend the Romulan/Reman featured episode series, it's really engrossing and each mission in it is designed really well.

WyldKat wrote on May 1, 2011, 03:34:I've actually been having a ton of fun with STO after all the changes they've made. Most of that is because of the weekly episodes and the Foundry, which lets people create missions for others to play. There's been some fantastic story driven player-made episodes I've played.

I have a lifetime subscription to this, and haven't touched it in 8 months. I think I might have to check it out again. I kind of forgot about it until you mentioned it :P.

Cutter wrote on Apr 30, 2011, 23:17:If you know anything about the genre it doesn't take much to realize this is going to be a 300 million dollar failure.

I've played basically every MMO, and what I can say about this one without breaking NDA is that I'm quite confident you're wrong. In fact, I think I'll save your quote here in my sig and break it out later this year.

I think this guy is lying. I was in the Beta. You get 3 days to test. So unless he is in his 3 days now...and not that you can get anything out of it in 3 days. You get to play one class, the class they are testing that round. And only up to a certain level, whatever skills they happen to be testing at that time. Its very boxed in.

StingingVelvet wrote on May 1, 2011, 07:18:I wonder if you can do these solo with your NPC companion. I'm not an MMO guy but I plan to buy this for some solo questing. It would be a shame to miss out on these flashpoints.

This is my point exactly. So will everyone else, probably myself included. They simply won't stay for the long run. As I've been saying for a long time now, the MMO genre has long needed an overhaul, and even with GW2 probably doing that the best - from all indications we can get at this point - it still won't be enough. Cryptic's Neverwinter is the way to move forward. It's an online game, not massively so - this builds communities which stick. And while they develop content the main thrust is user created content which means an ever abundance of new things to do without having to wait months or years at a time. Now, I don't know Cryptic can pull this off, but the idea is sound and it's the best way to move forward.

"During times of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

The more I hear about TOR, the less I'm inclined to buy. To be truthful, not having full control over your ship, having it fly on rails was pretty much the nail in the coffin for me.

I've actually been having a ton of fun with STO after all the changes they've made. Most of that is because of the weekly episodes and the Foundry, which lets people create missions for others to play. There's been some fantastic story driven player-made episodes I've played. Cryptic's other game, Neverwinter, will have a similar toolset, where people can make their own adventures and play them with friends or share with strangers.

I think that's really something special about these games. Sure there's still premium content rolling out by the creators but you have the ability to make your own as well, or just play through content others have made and totally bypass all the grind in an MMO. It pretty much takes a "theme park" MMO and totally throws it into the "sandbox" territory. User generated content could very well be the future of MMOs, now that the static themepark model is starting to get old to a large percentage of MMO fans.

I'm sure the story arcs and voice acting will be great in TOR and having a story for each class will allow for some replayability, however once you max all the classes out what then? At this point it sounds like a typical end-game PVE and/or PVP loot grind. I have doubts they'll be able to keep up with content demands and keep the quality up considering how much work it takes to fully VO multi-branching quests.

I'm happy for Bioware to prove me wrong but it seems like this game is missing the "massively" bit that would warrant a subscription.

It doesn't get changed because the people who developers count on to play MMOs are, for the most part...not looking for good games. They are looking for the MMO formula.

Very few developers want to step away from that formula because its comfortable and easy to do. It doesn't offend the inept, it doesn't force the average joe to think and it doesn't require anything more than a willingness to be a part of a huge social facebook with a game interface layered over it.

Of the 2 MMOs I have ever really seriously played(EVE and City of Heroes), I didn't play them because they were MMOs. I played them because they had/have game elements that weren't really being done anywhere else.

I played EVE because of the openness and dynamics of the world, and I played COH because there were no other decent superhero games out there that allowed that level of customization for your character(I'd like a Freedom Force sequel).

MMOs will always be for a particular breed of people who want to do the same stupid things over and over again.

TOR may juggle around and mask that formula a bit. But at its heart, it cannot exist as anything but an MMO with all the crap that entails.

Why would you keep crossing your fingers for KOTOR 3 when that is NOT what they are making? It's just as silly as people expecting it to have gameplay like Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy or X-Wing vs Tie fighter. It was never going to happen.

Predicting its failure based on the absence of elements you want from other, non-MMO games is just plain stupid. It will succeed or fail based on how good an MMO it is.

I'm not sure if your just a fanboy who doesn't like hearing any criticism or you have some unspoken information the rest of us lack and your confident enough to make such a move.

I do hope it's the latter. Though my money is on Guild Wars 2 simply because I am so sick of the mold, and from all appearances ToR fits very snuggly into said mold. Then again I'm such a raving Star Wars fan it might not matter.

Cutter wrote on Apr 30, 2011, 23:17:If you know anything about the genre it doesn't take much to realize this is going to be a 300 million dollar failure.

I've played basically every MMO, and what I can say about this one without breaking NDA is that I'm quite confident you're wrong. In fact, I think I'll save your quote here in my sig and break it out later this year.